I have repeatedly dug my heels in to retain the classic concept of ‘ideology’ for sociology. In the proverbial nutshell this refers to a view of the world that reflects the vested interests of – powerful capitalist or elite – members of a society. It does NOT refer to any view of the world held by any grouping. In this blog I enlarge on this rather blunt definition.
A useful starting point is a distinction between Experience I and Experience II made by E P Thompson and picked up by Dave Byrne and Sally Ruane in their Paying for the Welfare State in the 21st Century. They summarise as follows:
‘Thompson (in his ‘The Politics of Theory’ in Samuel’s edited collection entitled ‘People’s History and Socialist Theory’, published in 1981) defined ‘Experience II’ as the understanding of the social order created by all the pressures brought to bear on people’s mindsets by the pressures of the media and what we might call the ideological state apparatuses – what ‘they’ tell us things are like. ‘Experience I’ is our understandings as shaped by lived experience in relation to the character of the capitalist social order. Key aspects of this lived experience are of course exploitation and crisis. As Thompson puts it, the impact of Experience I on our understanding and behaviour ‘cannot be infinitely postponed, falsified or suppressed by ideology’. In a lovely phrase he asserts: ‘it walks in the door without knocking’.’
Commenting in 2017, they add:
‘In the aftermath of the crisis and with the imposition of austerity Experience I is through the door and half way up the stairs.’
Thompson again:
‘Experience I is in eternal friction with imposed consciousness, and, as it breaks through, we, who fight in all the intricate vocabularies and disciplines of Experience II, are given moments of openness and opportunity before the mould of ideology is imposed once more.’
Like others, I have noted the UK’s ‘perfect storm’ of post-1970s deregulated financialised or rentier capitalism; post-2010 political austerity; Brexit; COVID-19; and growing state authoritarianism/post-democracy. And underpinning and dwarfing all these is the imminent threat of climate change, the very essence of Beck’s version of ‘risk society’. Inevitably, this context to the full-blown contemporary attack on the working class is lending renewed salience to Experience I.
I have previously suggested that a pendulum swings from intricate historical and contemporary detail at one end to the discernment of patterns, ideal types and sociological explanations at the other. It is a division of labour that can vex each party: historians (focusing on trees) grow restless at the latter, sociologists (focusing on the wood) at the former. Thompson was conspicuously towards the historical end of the pendulum swing; unsurprisingly, I’m towards the sociological end.
I will not repeat here – let alone elaborate on – my previously rehearsed views on the likely motors of social transformation. I want rather to reflect a little on the continuing relevance of concept of ideology for sociology. Clearly Thompson’s Experience II offers more subtlety than simplistic Marxian versions of the political and cultural superstructure being ‘determined’ by the economic base. It represents the social insinuating itself into the personal via lived experience and lived bodies while sitting poignantly at the interface of this dialectic.
I want to sketch a skeletal research agenda around what I take to be the recent sociological neglect of ideology. The following strike me as urgent areas for renewed theoretical, conceptual and empirical enquiry. They naturally fall into four principal clusters:
- Class-based interests and authorship: I have argued that there is a distinctly new phase or configuration of the ‘class/command dynamic’ (ie capital buys power to make policy but gets more for its investment in post-1970s rentier capitalism than it did in post-WW2 welfare state capitalism). Deploying the methods of C Wright Mills in his classic study of interlocking American elites, it is vital to document precisely whose vested interests lie behind the construction of the contemporary ‘justificatory’ neoliberal ideology; and – the crucial question for sociologists – how do they sponsor and use neoliberal ideology to produce, reproduce and ultimately surf enduring capitalist social structures like class to their personal advantage.
- Narrative construction and embellishment: if those I have termed the ‘capital monopolists’ are the ultimate authors and sponsors of neoliberal ideology, much of the hard work of constant narrative construction, reconstruction and dissemination is undertaken by well-remunerated, cross-class ‘co-optees’ (that is, members of what Byrne calls the ‘concierge class’). Members of the latter are embedded in the mainstream media and, at the sharp end, comprise an army of think tank lobbyists.
- Mechanisms of distraction: neoliberal ideology ’hides behind’ a Lakatosian ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses that serve to deflect attention from its core propositions. I have often written of rentier capitalism’s relativisation of culture, indirectly captured by umbrella terms like ‘identity politics’, plus a series of companion articulations, like ‘post-expert’, ‘post-truth’, ‘anti-woke’, cancel culture’, etc. What these mechanisms do it undermine and sabotage potential critiques of the status quo. Neoliberalism, it seems, is the last ‘grand’ narrative! Sociologists have sometimes fallen foul of these concepts (even after the demise of the fad of postmodernism), not least in their abandonment of the classic concept of ideology.
- Ideological deconstruction: it is important that we engage with the issue and mechanics of Experience I-type challenges to neoliberal ideology, whether in the workplace or the enabling/protest sectors of civil society and the public sphere. While this necessarily involves interdisciplinary research, sociologists have a special responsibility to devise ideal typical precursors for resistance and collective action.
As ever, these blogs are occasions for thinking aloud, not for polished analysis. Obviously I need to address these matters further.